Many computer users maintain a number of different email accounts. For example, many users have separate accounts for home and work. Unfortunately, maintaining more than one account can be cumbersome, often requiring the user to check his or her mail at more than one location. A communications server in accordance with the invention simplifies this process by automatically collecting all of the messages from two or more email sources and presenting the collection to the user.
Some conventional mail systems collect mail from various sources. However, such systems do not work in many cases in which one of the email sources is a client connected to the mail system via a protective firewall. In such cases, the firewall will not allow the mail collection systems to pull mail from the protected client. To address this problem, an embodiment of the invention includes a mail agent that can be added to a protected client to instruct the client to periodically push messages to the mail system. The mail system is therefore not limited to mail collection from sources on the same network, and can therefore provide the user with a complete listing of the user's mail from a single location.
In addition to providing the user access to a number of mail sources, one embodiment of the invention dispatches messages to an appropriate receiving device based on the user's needs, as specified by the user. For example, a communications server in accordance with one embodiment can be configured to dispatch important messages to a wireless device, such as a mobile phone or pager.
Forwarded messages are automatically reformatted for the receiving device, while a copy of the original message is retained. The retained copy can be viewed later if the user is interested in message content that is incompatible with the wireless device. The user can also use the wireless device to forward the original message to another receiving device. In the case of forwarding, the saved original message and not the reformatted message is sent to the forwarding address.
In one embodiment messages are reformatted to include a phone number of the message sender. The reformatted message, when conveyed to the user's mobile phone, can then present the user with an option to return the message by calling the sender. The reformatted message can include more than one phone number. In some embodiments the sender's phone numbers are prioritized for presentation to the user. For example, the sender's work number might have a higher priority than the sender's work number during working hours.
In another embodiment messages are reformatted to include a link to contact information for the message sender. The reformatted message, when conveyed to the user's mobile phone, can then present the user with an option to review the contact information prior to responding to the message. The contact information can include e.g. the sender's nickname, address, phone numbers, and general notes that might be of interest to the recipient.
Some conventional email services collect messages from various mail sources, allowing users to receive both messages directed to a user's work address and messages directed to a user's home address, for example. When the user then responds to these messages, a single email address identifies the source of the reply. Assume, for example, that a user is assigned that user address “user@home” for a personal email account and “user@work” for a work-related email account. Further assume that the user's email systems collects mail directed to both the work and home accounts, allowing the user to respond to personal and work-related messages from home. The user responding from home to a collection of work-related email messages will typically respond to each message as “user@home.” Subsequent replies from the user's response message will then be directed to the user's home address, even if the original message was directed to the user's work account. This failure to maintain the user's separate identities can be problematic, as the user will not be able to effectively categorize messages if the user's work and home identities are not preserved. An embodiment of the invention addresses this problem, allowing a user to easily maintain separate user identities.
In one embodiment that forwards messages to wireless devices, if the user's mobile phone is unavailable, then the original message is reformatted and forwarded to the user's pager. This embodiment is beneficial, particularly for urgent messages, as pagers generally provide a more robust means of communication than do mobile phones.
This summary does not limit the claims, which are defined instead by the claims.